Peer-to-Peer Networking
Peer Channel is a multiparty, peer-to-peer (P2P) communication technology in Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). It provides a secure and scalable message-based P2P communication channel for application developers. One common example of a multiparty application that can benefit from Peer Channel is a collaborative application, such as chat, where a group of people chat with one another in a peer-to-peer manner without servers. Peer Channel enables P2P collaboration, content distribution, load balancing, and distributed processing for both consumer and enterprise scenarios.
Peer Channel is enabled by default on Windows Vista, as is all of WCF. To access Peer Channel classes, add references to System.ServiceModel.dll to your project.
The following sections contain information about peer-to-peer networking and the use of Peer Channel classes to create peer-enabled network applications.
In This Section
Peer Channel Scenarios: Describes development scenarios supported by the Peer Channel APIs, such as publication/subscription messaging, collaboration, distributed processing, and gaming.
Peer Channel Concepts: Describes Peer Meshes, Peer Nodes, Peer Channel security, and Peer Resolvers.
Building a Peer Channel Application: Provides guidance on developing Peer Channel applications.
Peer Channel Code Examples
Peer Channel Custom Peer Resolver